Hi, I'm Jim Denison with Dennis Informed, and this is the daily article for Wednesday, October 17th, 2018.

Stephen Clary and his friends were ecstatic at halftime of the 2017 Super Bowl. His Atlanta Falcons were up

28 to 3 over New England. By the time the Patriots came back to defeat his team, he was in the

hospital with chest pain.

A study published last year suggests that the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat can substantially affect the cardiovascular system. Heart rates peak most often during scoring

opportunities and overtime. September and October are the only months when you can watch baseball,

basketball, hockey, and football.

But our fixation with athletics is not confined to this season of the year.

Americans spend $100 billion on sports every year.

According to a Barnah study, 64% of Americans think pro athletes have more influence in society than pastors.

We commonly refer to idolizing sports figures and

other celebrities. Perhaps we're more right than we know. I have a wooden idol on one of my shelves in my

library. I purchased it nearly 40 years ago when I was a missionary in East Malaysia. It's a hand-carved

image of a bird with a large beak. I was told that some of the

natives view it as a nature god. The wooden bird is not an idol to me. It's merely a souvenir.

However, I have other idols in my life. They're less visible, but much more dangerous. You have

yours as well. We think of idols as man-made objects of worship, images of Bale, Venus, and other deities known to history,

but our idols don't have to be religious to be deadly.

Idolatry is glorifying anyone or anything more than we glorify God.

It's valuing anyone or anything more than we value our Lord.

It's finding our primary source of hope in anything other than our Heavenly

Father. We commit this sin when we choose to impress people in a way that dishonors our Lord,

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